After installing XFCE, when an external hard drive is plugged in, Nautilus pops up and mounts it automatically.

This is not how I expect the system to work. I don't use Nautilus and this prevents me from mounting/unmounting the hard drive in Dolphin.
Workaround is to unmount the drive with Nautilus but I'd rather not have it get involved in the first place.

Well I have no idea other than it popped up after installing XFCE. Maybe I installed another software that pulled it in at that time, but I sure didn't choose to install it on it's own.

Still doesn't help me fixing the issue. I haven't even dared removing it from the system as I'm not sure that would restore the previous functionality.

EDIT : Seeing an apt-get remove nautilus didn't show any dependencies I gave it a try. Funny thing is after that plugging in a drive still popped up a Nautilus. Rebooting fixed this. Now I'm just wondering what leftovers they may still be, such as the program that launched Nautilus when plugging a hard drive.

Not as wahrscheinlich as you may think. Since I've been using linux as my main system, around 1999, before that I was just checking it out once in a while, I never liked gnome. I did try a lot of distros at the time but always came back to debian based kde desktops. My main system have been more or less chronologically, knoppix, kanotix, sidux, sabayon, aptosid

Code:

root:/home/shakaz/Downloads/Debian/gfusion# apt-get remove cairo-dock-shortcuts-plugin nautilus-share nautilus-scripts-manager nautilus-pastebin nautilus-image-converter gnome-core libgnome2-doc libgnome2-common libbonobo2-0 gnome-session gnome-panel gnome-icon-theme gnome-color-chooser nautilus-gksu furiusisomount evince evince-gtk eiciel nautilus-arista acetoneiso fvwm-crystal
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package nautilus-arista is not installed, so not removed
Package cairo-dock-shortcuts-plugin is not installed, so not removed
Package eiciel is not installed, so not removed
Package evince-gtk is not installed, so not removed
Package evince is not installed, so not removed
Package furiusisomount is not installed, so not removed
Package fvwm-crystal is not installed, so not removed
Package nautilus-gksu is not installed, so not removed
Package gnome-color-chooser is not installed, so not removed
Package gnome-icon-theme is not installed, so not removed
Package gnome-panel is not installed, so not removed
Package gnome-session is not installed, so not removed
Package libgnome2-doc is not installed, so not removed
Package gnome-core is not installed, so not removed
Package nautilus-image-converter is not installed, so not removed
Package nautilus-pastebin is not installed, so not removed
Package nautilus-scripts-manager is not installed, so not removed
Package nautilus-share is not installed, so not removed
The following packages will be REMOVED:
[b]acetoneiso gnome-power-manager gnote libbonobo2-0 libbonoboui2-0 libgnome2-0 libgnome2-common libgnomeui-0 libpanel-applet2-0 libpanelappletmm-2.6-1c2 libswt-gnome-gtk-3.5-jni vuze[/b]
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 12 to remove and 294 not upgraded.
After this operation, 30.3 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]

So I guess that would be AcetoneISO or Vuze pulling it in. Still strange though as when I removed Nautilus there was no dependency to remove with it. What gnome-power-manager is doing there I really wonder.